Frailty
by Medie
Summary: there was a time he would have welcomed his father's affections.


Title: Frailty  
Author: M.  
Summary: There was a time when he would have welcomed, his father's affections.  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: All the characters and concepts of Alias are not mine.  
Feedback: Eep. Yes please. Have never written Sark before. ;-p  
Notes: As I said, I have never written Sark before but I hope this sounds like him. ;-p Because, to my amazement, he got chatty.  
  
"Frailty"  
by M.  
--------  
  
There was a time when he would have welcomed his father's affections, perhaps even returned them. He had been much younger then, more innocent, and had not yet learned the truth of the world he was growing up in.  
  
Just a little boy, with all the thoughts and wishes every little boy has, who'd wanted so very much just to know his father's name. A little boy who'd dreamt, almost every night, about having a normal life and a real family.  
  
That little boy has long since died - killed by a life spent in the shadows. By the understanding he has gained of the world as he has grown. Daddies do not always save the day, death is the only certainty, and family no certainty at all.  
  
Sark can barely remember what it was to be that little boy, can scarcely recall the days when his deepest wish was to know his father, to know what it was to feel real, honest emotion. To be vulnerable.  
  
In the intervening years since those days, he has taken the greatest of pains to ensure such vulnerability no longer exists in his life. The desires of an innocent child were a thousand times more deadly than any bullet. They were a way to open up a part of himself that was oh-so-very susceptible to the simple human emotion that was someone like Sydney Bristow's stock and trade. Such emotion made one weak and Sark would never ever again be weak. He had little tolerance for weakness in anyone else, thus would allow none in himself.  
  
In his refusal to allow weakness, Sark had removed the vulnerability of the desires by removing the desires themselves. Family was irrelevant. Useless. Sentimentality crippling. Dismissing them from his life was frighteningly easy. Or, rather, it would have been...if Sark could have been frightened. He cannot recall the last time he was well and truly scared.  
  
Fear, too, is a useless emotion.  
  
Sark has little use for most emotion but he has learned to employ it when it serves a purpose. His father's supposed murder and the subsequent loss of his inheritance had been just such occasions. It was expected by those about him that he would feel anger at the revelation. That he would wish to exact vengeance on the killer. Outraged that someone had taken that which his father had wanted him to have.  
  
Plans had been made in concern with his inheritance, he would deal with that in time, as for his father's murderer...knowing the killer was Sydney Bristow, he'd had every intention of exacting vengeance but not out of some misguided loyalty to his 'beloved' dead father. On the contrary, at the time, he had believed she'd deprived him of the chance to kill the old man himself. A crime that could not go unpunished.  
  
Now, of course, he knows differently. Believes he should have known then. Sydney Bristow had not - could not have - killed his father. Irina Derevko's daughter she might be but in the same way he has eliminated the weaknesses of his childhood, she has eliminated the strengths of hers. In many ways, she could have been his equal...if she had not allowed the weakness of her emotion to rule her life. Because of this, he now believes, he should not have believed the evidence. Known deception was afoot.  
  
Sydney will not allow herself to taste the truth of the life he leads, bucks violently against the knowledge that it calls to her still, but no matter. In this, she is still useful. Giving him the opportunity to excise any lingering doubts he had about his father from himself. To expunge any lingering sentimentality Lazarey brought out.  
  
Indeed, the time he'd spent with the man had proven to be most cathartic.  
  
He does regret, however, that once again the lovely Ms. Bristow is responsible for that final victory over Lazarey. It was a Covenant assassin that ended his father's life, not Sark himself, and he is quite aggrieved by this knowledge.  
  
But, again no matter, as he stands in the shadows, watching the quiet funeral of his father. Emotionless, he observes the proceedings with the knowledge he will deal with her over this as well. In his own way and his own time.  
  
Just as he always has done.  
  
Finis 


End file.
